The Snow Queen
by hauntedlittledoll
Summary: Title and Chapter Titles taken from the Hans Christian Anderson and/or Grimm fairy tales of the same name.  Male best friends are fathomless, and some days, Claire doesn't know why she bothers.  Jesse/Claire for 30 Quests challenge.
1. Beauty and the Beast

Claire is used to the boys at her school whistling at her. She's used to the catcalls. She knows that the popular clique of girls at her school call her 'the Snow Queen' or even 'the Virgin Mary.' The blasphemous words anger her more than any intended insult. She was suspended for a week due to fighting, but the black-eye she had dealt lasted longer than the suspension. Her muttered comment about demonic possession earned her the regular counseling.

Even the outsiders at school began avoiding her after that.

Which is perfectly fine by Claire who doesn't need friends. Friends can be possessed and use against you. Friends talk about fathers who disappear for years. Friends are a waste of time that could be better spent learning Latin and Enochian. The sooner her mother gets that, the happier they'll all be in the long run.

Claire likes to be alone. When Claire walks through the hallways of her school, the stupid little civilian children part like the Red Sea before her.

Claire kind of likes it that way.

So she's a little surprised when she runs into someone on her way back from lunch with her nose stuck in Mystery Spot. She's even more surprised when he doesn't hastily move away or pick a fight.

Instead, he holds out his hand and smiles. "I'm Jesse Turner. I'm new."

Claire raises one eyebrow slowly, a trick that she learned from her mother, and pointedly goes back to her book as she stepped around the new boy.

It doesn't faze him. He sort of hop-skips around, and then again to catch up to her. "I know who you are. You're Claire Novak, the prettiest girl in school, but you don't have any friends because you're weird."

Claire shrugs him off again. It doesn't appear to bother him in the slightest as he continues to follow her—still talking.

"I'm in seventh grade, and I pretty much only like art and science. I like knowing how things work . . . how they really work, not just how people _say_ they work, you know? Oh, and I moved here from Australia, and even after spending a whole year there, I didn't pick up the accent." He sounds slightly disgusted by this, and Claire pauses. He comes to a halt beside her.

Claire closes her book carefully and deliberately. "What. Do. You. Want."

"To be your friend," Jesse shrugs. "I'm weird too."

"Christo," Claire checks.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen," he returned promptly, his eyes big and solemn.

So maybe he isn't a demon, and maybe—just maybe—he actually knows what's out there, but Claire doesn't want a friend. "I'm a freshman, and you're just a kid," she points out.

"I'm really mature for my age," Jesse assures her, and holds out his hand again, just grinning expectantly, and Claire knows that this kid isn't going to just go away. So against her better judgment, she takes the offered hand.

And jumps a foot when the hand buzzer goes off.

"Mature my ass," she swears, and shoves the laughing boy into the nearest set of lockers. He rebounds faster than she had expected and tails her all the way to study hall. Claire studiously ignores him until the door closes behind her.

It's too late to go back now. The gossips are already making up stories about Claire walking to class with the younger new boy. Claire ignores them all.

She'll deal with Jesse Turner later.


	2. Hansel and Gretel

Claire glowered at the white house in front of her.

It hadn't done anything to earn her ire. It was a white two story house with a small front yard and a big porch swing just like most of the other houses on the street. It couldn't particularly help being the residence located at 52 Dogwood Drive, and Claire really shouldn't be harboring grudges against inanimate objects.

It didn't stop her from leveling a look at it that would crumble a lesser house. 52 Dogwood Drive stubbornly remained intact.

Claire follows the sidewalk up to the steps, and then crosses the porch to press the doorbell twice. She only has to wait a moment before the door is pulled open, and Jesse looks up at her in surprise.

"You said I should come over," Claire reminded him, before he could ask. Jesse had been saying it for two months now, and Claire had been steadily refusing the offer.

Except now she needed somewhere to hang out for a few hours until Castiel went away.

Jesse smiled. "Okay, come on in."

The entry way was bright yellow which made everything look like it glowed—including people. Claire followed Jesse hastily through to the kitchen where his parents were sitting at the table sharing a newspaper. His mom looked up and smiled brightly right at Claire. "Hello, you must be Claire."

Jesse turned red. "Yeah, um, Mom, Dad . . . this is Claire Novak. Claire, my mom and dad."

"It's nice to meet you," Claire smiled weakly. She'd forgotten that houses come with parents, and Claire had only just managed to shed her own.

Jesse quickly came to her rescue, and nudged her lightly. "Come on, let's go play Mario-Kart, Claire."

"Have fun, you two," Mr. Turner waved over his paper.

"Don't forget to take cookies!" Mrs. Turner cried, rushing over to the stove and pulling a pan of fresh chocolate chip cookies from the oven. "There's milk in the fridge, Jesse."

Two minutes later, Claire found herself inside Jesse's bedroom with a glass of milk in hand. She wasn't quite sure how she got there, but she wasn't going to admit that to Jesse.

Jesse kicked a beanbag chair closer to her, and set the plate of cookies on the floor between them. Then he moved past her, and disappeared briefly under the bed. "We don't have to play Mario-Kart," he explained, his voice muffled. "I've got other games. Or we could watch a movie."

Claire's not really a movie person, and she's not particularly great at video games either. So she shrugged, and told Jesse to choose.

Jesse twisted under the bed just enough to look out and up at her with a skeptical look. "You never give in this easy. And you're talking. You realize that's the number one warning sign, right?"

"Shut up," Claire scowled and plopped into the offered chair. "Put in a movie with explosions or something."

Jesse crawled back out, clutching a box of DVDs and waved one for her approval. Claire shrugged and reached for a cookie. They don't talk about the movie, and they don't talk about their parents, and they don't talk about _Castiel_ who she can't explain anyway.

She'll never admit it to him afterward, but Claire actually likes the Terminator movies that Jesse showed her.


	3. The Little Mermaid

Claire uneasily paced outside the locker rooms. The rest of the swim team had left already, but there was still no sign of Jesse. And if he had decided to get a ride from someone else, he would have told her, because Jesse was responsible like that.

Checking the hall in both directions, Claire slipped into the Boy's locker room, relatively certain that the only risk to her delicate sensibilities was Jesse and Claire found his selective modesty ridiculous anyway.

There was no outraged protest, or scramble for shelter. Green eyes didn't flash and a voice that wasn't finished deepening didn't squeak out an embarrassed accusation. The locker room was empty.

Claire moved past the shower room and into the tiled area surrounding the pool. At first she didn't see anyone. The coach wasn't even in the office like she had half-expected, and Jesse wasn't in the office or swimming extra laps or hovering lost in thought by the windows.

A second sweep of the pool revealed a scrap of red at the bottom, and Claire kicked off her shoes to run on the tile for a better look. Jesse was sitting on the bottom of the pool, eyes closed and absolutely still. Claire immediately dove in.

* * *

A few seconds later, Jesse was laughing at her as they both tread water in the deep end of the pool. Claire scowled at him, and shoved his arm away from her in agitation. "You scared the heck out of me, Jesse!"

He was still laughing.

Claire sent a wave over his head, and turned away in disgust to swim back to the ladder. Jesse caught up easily. "Wait, Claire. I'm sorry!"

Claire gave him a cold look and hoisted herself out of the water. Jesse grabbed the ladder, and looked up at her earnestly. "I'm sorry, Claire. Everybody left, and I lost track of time. I didn't mean to scare you. I was just thinking . . . wasn't in any danger."

"You were just _sitting_ there," Claire's voice was still higher than she cared to acknowledge.

Jesse ducked his head in shame. "I can hold my breath for a long time, Claire. I'm sorry that I scared you."

In the rational corner of her mind, Claire can maybe admit that she overreacted a little, because the younger boy is the star of the swim team, moves through water like he belongs there, and professes to speak fish just to mess with people. But she doesn't like seeing him like that, and she's still an outraged, inconvenienced teenage girl so she doesn't forgive him.

She did however sit down on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water, seeing as she's completely soaked through anyway. Jesse smiled up at her a little sheepishly. "I didn't even notice everyone else leave, Claire," he admitted.

Which isn't anything new, because people overlook Jesse all the time, even people who should know better like swim coaches who leave teenagers in the pool when they leave. In a lighter mood, Jesse would call it his cloak of invisibility and waggle his eyebrows in that annoying way of his.

Claire crossed her arms over her chest, and Jesse hauls himself up onto the bottom rung of the ladder, putting him directly into Claire's personal space—not that she has any real sense of that anymore. Having an angel in your head made things like the bubble or modesty irrelevant.

"C'mon, Claire. Forgive me and I'll buy you ice cream," he promised, sounding years younger in his pathetic attempt to bribe her. "Chocolate Peanut-butter cup," he wheedled. "Totally my treat."

It was always his treat. Jesse always had money, and it made Claire wonder what Mr. Turner did for a living.

"C'mon, Claire, you know you want it."

The younger boy really did know her too well. Huffing in exasperation, Claire shoved him backward, catching him off guard, and Jesse went down with a splash.

* * *

Later, when they're sitting in the bed of Claire's secondhand truck with ice cream cones dripping down their hands, and Claire is wearing Jesse's spare clothes, Claire actually asked him about it.

He caught a drip of strawberry, and was lost in thought for a moment. "I like being underwater. It's quiet and a good place to think." His face was too serious, too blank, eyes shut like they were when Claire found him earlier. That look made him seem older and bigger than Claire like he's part of something that she can't be. It makes Claire shiver, and sometimes it reminds her of Castiel.

"Think about what?" she asked.

One eye popped open, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Whether the X-Men could take the Justice League in a fight."

Claire smacked him upside the back of the head, and popped the last of her cone into her mouth. "I think all that chlorine is killing your brain."

Boys made ridiculous best friends, and some days Claire didn't know why she bothered.


	4. Sleeping Beauty

Claire was still reeling from the last week, and although she had originally intended to just sit quietly and watch Jesse skip rocks on the pond, every so often something would slip out before she could stop it.

"Your parents aren't real, are they?"

Claire felt guilty when Jesse actually flinched at that one. He didn't meet her eyes, just picked up another rock, and sent it flying out over the water.

"No, they're not," he said softly.

And didn't that explain so much about how liberal Mr. and Mrs. Turner were about things like rules and permission slips, the bigger things like epic allowances and Claire's all-access pass to their home. It even explained what they did all day while Jesse was at school; Claire would put money on them just . . . not existing . . . between the hours of eight and three.

They're not real.

"I don't have parents anymore," Jesse admitted. "Because I'm part demon, and my birth mother put me up for adoption, and I made my real adoptive parents forget about me so that they would be safe. The demons want me to fight for them, and the angels want me dead because I could kill them, and people just aren't safe knowing all this, Claire."

Claire rocked to her feet and shoved Jesse hard, sending the younger boy sprawling into the water. As Jesse flailed in the shallow waters, she planted her hands on her hips and stood tall like the righteous angelic warrior that Castiel had left imprinted in Claire's head. And then she unleashed her equally righteous fury on the teenager sitting in eight inches of mud and pond scum.

"I will not forget, and don't you dare make me, because if you even try, I will beat you into a bloody pulp and take you home to my mother," Claire commanded, "and then you'll never be rid of us."

Jesse nodded wordlessly.

"I'm of half a mind to do that anyway," Claire growled. "Stupid boy."

Jesse flushed, but didn't disagree. That made Claire even angrier.

"You have superpowers! You could make the whole world just go boom!" Claire stomped her foot. "You make up pretend parents, and you snap up money and food, and you turned that demon inside out, and you never even told me that you could!"

"You never told me that you had that angel inside you!" Jesse returned hotly. "He tried to kill me! Again!"

"Castiel's a jerk," Claire agreed, "but he didn't leave me with something worth mentioning. I don't have superpowers or anything. It's just a bad memory, and we don't talk about things like that!"

"Then why are we talking about this?" Jesse shouted, hitting the water hard enough to splash Claire.

There was a long minute where everything was quiet. Claire stared down at Jesse. He looked up at her with angry hard eyes that reminded her of Castiel's. Light and power and other . . .

"Because you're my best friend," she said finally. "And because I don't like the idea of you being alone. Because you almost died, and I couldn't do anything about it. I didn't know you could."

Jesse sank a little deeper into the muck, and when he broke eye contact, his eyes weren't that awful hard light anymore. Claire let him wallow for another minute, and then held out her hand expectantly.

And wasn't even the least bit surprised when Jesse yanked her in beside him.


	5. The Golden Goose

"Happy Valentine's Day, Claire!"

Claire stiffened, tightening her grasp on the school lunch-tray. It wasn't too late to give the jocks a collective heart attack by sitting at their table.

Jesse grinned and waved the cartoon box of cheap valentine candy under her nose. "You know you want it, Claire," her best friend teased.

Claire put down her tray and made a grab for the chocolate.

"Nuh-uh-uh," Jesse snickered, hiding it behind his back. "You have to open the card first."

"What card?" Claire asked skeptically. Jesse blinked, and then dove underneath the table for his book-bag. Like he couldn't just snap it into her hands. Claire rolled her eyes and gave him an 'accidental' kick while he was down there.

It was like kicking a brick wall.

"Aha!" Jesse appeared again on the other side of the table brandishing a homemade red envelope. Jesse was big on do-it-yourself stuff. "Got it."

Claire reluctantly reached for the offering, and split the envelope neatly. Other than the flashy envelope, it was a very untraditional valentine—not unlike the ones you might pass around in Elementary School. The dinosaur surfing in heart-covered trunks advised her that the Surf's_ Up!_ And underneath was written _Happy Valentine's Day_ in Jesse's blunt handwriting. "What is . . . ?"

"Godzilla surfing," Jesse informed her proudly.

"Stylish swim trunks," Claire snorted, and squinted at the tiny city drawn in under Godzilla's monster tidal wave. "Is that _Tokyo_?"

Jesse flushed a color not unlike the noxious holiday red. "C'mon, it survived twenty-nine movies, four TV shows, and the rest of the Godzilla franchise."

He would know. He had them all.

"Godzilla doesn't have real superpowers," Claire hissed, then blanched. "At least he _didn't_ have real superpowers. Does Godzilla have real superpowers now?"

Jesse rolled his eyes. "I'm fifteen. I think I have a grasp on reality now, Claire."

Claire dropped his drawing on the table, and poked him hard in the chest. "You brought the tooth-fairy to life, Jesse. The _evil_ tooth-fairy. I'm allowed to be paranoid."

Jesse shook his head in exasperation, and stole her fries. "Tokyo's fine, Claire. Eat your lunch." Claire reluctantly reached for her burger, and Jesse continued. "Or we could skip lunch, skip next period, and go check on Japan." He grinned. "If it'd make you feel better . . ."

Claire looked around hastily. No one was paying them any attention. "One hour," she decreed, reaching out to take his hand.

Jesse nodded, snapped his fingers, and they were gone.


	6. Snow White

Jesse looked up, and wiped at his eyes hastily. "Go away, Claire."

"No," she returned, dropping into one of his beanbag chairs. He turned away, bottom lip stuck out. "I'm sorry, Jesse."

He glanced at her, and then away again. "You're my best friend, Claire, but sometimes I don't like you very much."

Claire tucked her legs under her. "Sometimes I don't like me very much either," she admitted. "I'm sorry I picked a fight."

"I don't care about that," Jesse snapped.

Claire flinched.

Jesse looked away, his face red, and Claire kept her mouth shut. Jesse studied the floor like it was the most interesting thing ever. "You shouldn't have kissed me," he muttered. "You don't like me; you just wanted to make Castiel mad."

The room abruptly changed color from blue to red and back again. Claire ignored the show, worrying her bottom lip.

Dating had never really been her thing, and the two boys she had kissed before Castiel meant nothing to her now. Claire's chances at dating after Castiel were shot even if she hadn't taken to hanging out with a younger boy.

Jesse hasn't shown any interest in dating in the three years that she had known him.

"Jesse?" she asked slowly. "Was that your first kiss?"

"Yes," he growled, daring her to make something of it.

Claire worried her bottom lip, and moved to kneel in front of Jesse, balancing herself lightly with two fingers pressed to his knee. Jesse's eyes widened. "What are you-"

"Shut up," Claire told him and prevented a reply by kissing him again.

Well, really it was more a quick brush of dry lips, but that's what a first kiss is supposed to be like—not the angry, passionate one of earlier. Jesse was right; Claire had one thing on her mind earlier, and it was Castiel. Claire colored in shame, but she maintained eye contact.

"The next time you get kissed, it should be like that," Claire promised him. "Or I'll kick her ass."


End file.
